2. Shall We Gather at the River, poems by James Wright. Originally published in 1960, this is a beautiful, elegiac collection by one of my favorite poets.

3. Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories, edited and with an introduction by Randall Jarrell. A small, lovely anthology, including work by Chekhov, Chuang T’zu, Dinesen, the Brothers Grimm and many others, this is absorbing reading. Take it one story at a time. Of this collection, Jarrell says, “Here, then, are thirty stories. Some of them are realistic, some fantastic; from the heights of some of the stories the abysses of others may seem infinitely removed. It is the reader who joins them.”